Off The Grid Gets NFTs In Our Battle Royale


Of course.

Off The Grid is an upcoming battle royale game I’ve been hearing a lot about over the past few days mostly because of Neill Blomkamp’s involvement, and odds are if you pay attention to the gaming news so have you. A lot of “here’s everything we know about Off The Grid” articles coming out over the last few days talking about the game’s 150 player battle royale mode, the promise by the developers that the game is heavily focused on creating a unique player-driven narrative and evolving story, and all the unique ways that players can craft, trade, and display their in-game items. Wait a fat second…emphasizing player control over their items. Nah, they can’t be hinting at what I think they’re hinting at. Can they?

I may have read dozens of news articles about Off The Grid over the past few days and I’ve been around long enough to know suspicious marketing phrases when I see them. There’s something that none of these articles are talking about; Off The Grid is going toward NFTs and the Blockchain. How do I know this? I checked their website.

What do we know about Gunzilla’s plans for Off The Grid and blockchain technology? Well we know that it will utilize a coin called GunZ, which is described as such:

GunZ is the blockchain-based Play-AND-Earn economy for Gunzilla Game’s upcoming AAA title. GunZ brings blockchain and gaming together by allowing players to earn, own, and trade in-game items while playing a top-tier multiplayer shooter.

We also know that players will be able to earn NFTs by “extracting” them from game sessions. GunZ will operate on the Binance Smart Chain and NFTs will be available via Avalanche as blockchain platforms.

Players can collect data cubes (NFTs) including weapons, skins, and other in-game items by extracting them as loot from the in-game session. Collected NFTs can be traded and stored via an external or integrated marketplace (website, companion app). Battle Pass Owners can earn amounts of GUN tokens as rewards.

The website talks about players earning NFTs and then validating them through “verifiers” whose oddly obscure job description appears to involve validating their creation and then taking a cut of the sales on that item.

Now Gunzilla Games is promising that Off The Grid is being developed as a game for gamers foremost, with blockchain technology being a secondary feature.

Our aim is to develop an experience that gamers love, so those who want to play the game solely for fun and to experience the next evolution of the multiplayer shooter genre can absolutely do so; they won’t see any difference in their gameplay experience. We’re developing the game for shooter players, first and foremost.

Whether or not they stick to that promise is another question entirely. It seems strange that both the news coverage as well as Gunzilla’s own forward-facing press releases have completely dodged talking about GunZ or the integration of crypto or NFTs. At least until YouTuber BigFryTV put out this video.

BigFry’s discussion of of the NFT/blockchain technology has apparently prompted the threat of copyright takedown over “confidential information” despite everything in the video being obtained by public sources.

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Not a fantastic look. NFTs and crypto integrations into games has been a controversial subject with numerous developers forced by overwhelmingly negative public response to abandon their plans. It might explain why Gunzilla has been hesitant about openly talking about its plans for integration into Off The Grid at this point in the game’s marketing.

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